Ninja Theory, Blue Castle Games, Dimps and now Slant 6 – “you’re my wives now” as the wonderful Papa Lazarazu from the League of Gentlemen used to say… The fact that Blue Castle Games has chosen to change their name to match ours just shows how into our relationship they are.

The way that Capcom makes games with our partner studios is much like a perfect marriage… except without a wedding bit, which is a shame as seeing the fat crying bridesmaid and great uncle George performing the whole Las Ketchup dance routine with his tie around his head when a development deal is signed would be amazing.

These Capcom developer relationships are not some drunken one night stand where we hand over the goods and then leave never to be seen again, but a long term partnership. From start to finish there are always two in this relationship, working hard. Perhaps from the outside people look at our marriage and wonder what each party brings to the table, but we don’t choose to get married to anyone lightly, we spend plenty of time getting to know them, finding out the way they do things, their thoughts, ideas and interests, what makes them tick and what makes them angry. At the same time the developer can get a good look at the nuances of working with Capcom and how we like to be involved in every development decision. Basically between the two parties we’re looking to create the most perfect children or games if you are already bored by this long winded metaphor.

Who for example would have thought that a company that made two baseball games would be able to nail, so completely, the nuances of the Dead Rising universe? Or a company better known for platformers to amazingly ‘get’ the fighting mechanics of the best selling fighting game of the past 10 years? Capcom did. We hand picked these development partners to work with us on our games, and after the initial courting period, we knew that working together would create amazing results.

It’s not always perfect, but when both parties work hard at something together you can create something beautiful, if you end up picking the wrong partner, or if both partners don’t dedicate them fully to the partnership it can go wrong and end in messy divorce, and you know who suffers the most? The kids.